Any publications or references discussed herein are presented to describe the background of the invention and to provide additional detail regarding its practice. Nothing herein is to be construed as an admission that the inventors are not entitled to antedate such disclosure by virtue of prior invention.
Siloxane based hydrogels are used for variety of applications in the area of health care, personal care, agriculture, coatings, home care etc, because of their water absorbing and high oxygen permeable nature. However these silicone hydrogels show poor hydrolytic stability under acidic or basic pH conditions. This effect is predominant when the siloxane chain length is too small. Especially, the trisiloxane-based compounds are well known to undergo rapid hydrolytic cleavage under acidic or basic pH conditions. The instant invention discloses siloxane compositions that are hydrolytically more stable and can be used to form hydrolytically stable silicone hydrogel copolymer that can be potentially used for various applications, including those cited above.
Carbomer is a generic name for synthetic high molecular weight polymers of acrylic acid used as thickening, dispersing, suspending and emulsifying agents in pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. They may be homopolymers of acrylic acid, as well as copolymers with methacrylic acid and other acrylates.